Fox Bulls & Bears Panelists Fearmonger Over Raising Minimum Wage
Click here to view this media Another Saturday, another week for members of Fox’s Saturday morning “business block” to sit around and promote a race to the bottom for American workers. This segment the topic was President Obama’s new pick to lead his Council of Economic Advisers, Alan Krueger . Their issue with Krueger? He supports increases in the minimum wage, which they naturally start fearmongering over, even though there’s not a chance in hell we’d see another increase with the makeup of this current Congress. BUTTNER: Meet Alan Krueger. He’s the President’s pick to lead his team to help turn around the economy. And he’s also a big time believer in hiking the minimum wage. But, Gary B. you say in this bad economy, the way to get jobs back is to ditch the minimum wage altogether. SMITH: Absolutely Brenda. Look, you know, minimum wage is nothing more than a form of price control. That’s what it is, and even if you believe wholeheartedly in the goodness of the minimum wage, all you have to do is the statistics. When… the last time we bumped minimum wage in 2009, youth unemployment was 21%. It went to 30%. Black teen unemployment is now over 40% Brenda. So it’s not just wrong to say minimum wage is good. I think it’s irresponsible, particularly in this economy. After the panel’s one lonely liberal, Jehmu Greene called him out for just being wrong on the facts and some back forth between Greene and a couple of the other panel members on whether raising the minimum wage increases unemployment or hinders job growth or not, panelist Todd Schoenberger goes into a full rant agreeing with Gary B. Smith that the minimum wage should be eliminated or at least reduced, claiming that it’s killing job growth in our economy and can lead to inflation. You’ve got to love the reaction from the rest of them when Greene finishes off the segment with this statement: GREENE: Well, forget the minimum wage. Why don’t we just have the wages of the salaries keep up with where CEO’s have been in the last few years. And if that was the case, you would have workers making $22 an hour, but that’s clearly not the case. Followed by all of the wingnuts on the panel’s heads simultaneously exploding. Heaven forbid anyone brings up the horrible income disparity we have in the United States while they’re debating whether the lowest income earners among us should be paid even less. Media Matters posted a shorter portion of this segment and linked some research they did on the matter when Fox’s John Stossel was making similar claims to those of Smith and Schoenberger — Fox’s Stossel Ignores Evidence To Rail Against Minimum Wage .
Go here to read the rest:
Fox Bulls & Bears Panelists Fearmonger Over Raising Minimum Wage
Posted by
on September 4, 2011. Filed under